Asked to summarize Zen in a sentence, great teacher Shunryu Suzuki said simply, “Everything changes.” To that, a psychoanalyst I know added, “…and we don’t like it.”

Everything is constantly changing, and we tend to dislike that. Actually, everything IS change. Nothing can exist without changing. Sound is vibration, light is oscillation, everything moves and changes, always. But We Don’t Like It.

We don’t like it. We want things to stay the same, unless those things are unpleasant to us, then we want them to change — and then, stop changing! Hold it right there, where I want it! Stop the Universe, I want to get off!

We have no choice. Life is change, we are change, existence is nothing but change. No-change exists only in our minds.

So the difficult work is letting go of what our minds insist is The Only Acceptable Way For Things to Be. The…